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Narrated by Robin Sachs
Alister McGrathUnabridged — 13 hours, 57 minutes
Narrated by Robin Sachs
Alister McGrathUnabridged — 13 hours, 57 minutes
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…McGrath is a sprightly writer, quite colloquial in tone, speeding over many aspects of his subject's life, but slowing down to reflect on those he finds significant…an immense amount has been written about C.S. Lewis, but if you're looking for a lively, general introduction to this multitalented thinker and writer, Alister McGrath's new biography is a good place to start.
To the question of whether the world really needs another biography of C.S. Lewis, McGrath’s lucid and unsentimental portrait of the Christian champion responds with a resounding “yes.” The year 2013 marks the 50th anniversary of Lewis’s death, and times have changed and evangelical sentiments have matured. McGrath offers a new and at times shocking look into the complicated life of this complex figure, in a deeply researched biography. The author takes us headlong into the heart of a Lewis we’ve known little about: his unconventional affair with Mrs. Jane Moore; his hostile and deceptive relationship with his father; his curiosity about the sensuality of cruelty. McGrath navigates the reader through these messy themes, ultimately landing us onto the solid ground of Lewis’s postconversion legacy. He shows with skill, sympathy, dispassion, and engaging prose that Lewis, like the rest of us, did the best he could with the hand he was dealt. . But he got over it, as must all those who would prefer a Lewis without shadows. (Mar.)
"This multifaceted biography and analysis of C.S. Lewis's life and works would challenge even the most dedicated audiobook narrator. The late Robin Sachs clearly has a keen understanding of the work and the life he is recounting. The book is divided into segments that include the various events of Lewis's life. His relationship with his father, the death of his wife, and his ongoing relationship with his brother influenced his literature. Additionally, his conversion from atheism to Christianity transformed his character. With a tranquil tone and fluid delivery, Robin Sachs leads the listener through these various sections with quiet perception of the man and thoroughly reveals Lewis's complex nature. It's a stellar performance and a stunning biography."
E.S. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award - © AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine
A thoroughly researched yet very readable, chronological account of C.S. Lewis’ life, his literature, and his journey from atheism to Christianity. Fifty years after his death, the words of Lewis continue to inspire many, and McGrath’s biography may help to unravel some of the mystery behind his eccentric mind. Staff Pick
While readers of C. S. Lewis might assume a biography would cover his literature, this account comes from an eminent theologian and focuses on Lewis’ spiritual life and conversion—and therefore is a definitive survey of Lewis’ conversion and faith, recommended for spirituality holdings above all else. Dr. McGrath is the only scholar to analyze the entire collection of Lewis’ letters and archives: his survey is a powerful biography combining elements of spiritual and literary analysis, and is a special pick for any Christian collection.
If you’re looking for a lively, general introduction to this multitalented thinker and writer, Alister McGrath’s new biography is a good place to start.
McGrath does this so limpidly, so intelligently, and so sympathetically that this biography is the one Lewis’ admirers—especially those who, like him, believe that books are to be read and enjoyed—should prefer to all others.
McGrath is not intimidated by Lewis nor overly reverential of him; but he shows him a professional respect that ought to silence those who dismiss Lewis as a theological amateur. He points out that under its clothing of reasoned argument, Lewis’ theology is always founded on a profoundly aesthetic effort: to draw us a picture of the Christian universe and our place in it that moves, attracts and persuades us, so that we say: yes, this is what life is really like, and how much more real it is than we ever imagined. A powerful achievement.
On the 50th anniversary of his death, this new C. S. Lewis biography succeeds in deepening the appeal of his works…The most abiding gift of C. S. Lewis: A Life is its fierce curiosity about the novels, letters, and books of popular philosophy that are Lewis’ most substantial legacy. McGrath’s biography promises to introduce new readers to those works—and inspire veteran C. S. Lewis fans to visit them again.
Rather than canonizing Lewis, McGrath’s meticulously detailed book succeeds in humanizing him.
Alister McGrath’s C. S. Lewis: A Life now supplies a welcome balance, along with some significant discoveries. Mr. McGrath is well placed, culturally speaking, to understand and sympathize with Lewis. . . . One comes away with a renewed sympathy for a provocative, perceptive, contrarian and somewhat tormented soul
There have been plenty of biographies of Lewis—I once wrote one myself—but I do not think there has been a better one than Alister McGrath’s. He is a punctilious and enthusiastic reader of all Lewis’s work—the children’s stories, the science fiction, the Christian apologetics and the excellent literary criticism and literary history. He is from Northern Ireland, as Lewis was himself, and he is especially astute about drawing out the essentially Northern Irish qualities of this very odd man. And he is sympathetic to the real oddness of his story.
So many biographies of C.S. Lewis are available that one might wonder whether this latest is needed. However, McGrath's (theology & ministry, King's Coll. London; The Dawkins Delusion) C.S. Lewis is unique in a few ways. First, it is written by a major theologian who can provide excellent insights into Lewis's thought. Second, it utilizes the revised and enlarged edition of Lewis's collected letters, an expansive edition available only in the past decade. Third, it contains new thoughts on Lewis's life, such as a different date for his conversion to Christianity, based on a careful reading of primary sources, and discussion of how Lewis's letters show that he could compartmentalize some experiences, while others tormented him; he stated that his difficult school years were worse than serving as a frontline infantryman in World War I. McGrath furthermore writes an accessible biography, with a chronological narrative followed by discussion of Lewis's "afterlife," addressing how interest in Lewis has heightened from the 1970s or 1980s to the present. VERDICT Both general readers and scholars interested in Lewis will find this book very helpful.—John Jaeger, Dallas Baptist Univ. Lib., TX
This multifaceted biography and analysis of C.S. Lewis’s life and works would challenge even the most dedicated audiobook narrator. The late Robin Sachs clearly has a keen understanding of the work and the life he is recounting. The book is divided into segments that include the various events of Lewis’s life. His relationship with his father, the death of his wife, and his ongoing relationship with his brother influenced his literature. Additionally, his conversion from atheism to Christianity transformed his character. With a tranquil tone and fluid delivery, Robin Sachs leads the listener through these various sections with a quiet perception of the man and thoroughly reveals Lewis’s complex nature. It’s a stellar performance and a stunning biography. E.E.S. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine
Christian theologian McGrath (Theology and Ministry/King's College London; Mere Apologetics, 2012, etc.) dissects the life of C.S. Lewis 50 years after the author's death, focusing on how his life was impacted by theology and vice versa. In this chronological account, McGrath splits Lewis' life into sections, beginning with childhood and then moving through his many years at Oxford, his time at Cambridge, and then his death and posthumous popularity. An entire section is also devoted to the Chronicles of Narnia and its religious meaning, conception and popularity. Based almost completely on Lewis' letters, the biography is rich with information but short on the sort of anecdotes that make author biographies so colorful. McGrath focuses mainly on Lewis' religious development, with a secondary theme of the relationships that affected his work. This concentration on Lewis' role in apologetics may be due to the fact that McGrath himself is an apologist and finds common ground with Lewis in this area. While this focus may be useful for Lewis scholars and die-hard fans, it feels narrow for a literary biography. McGrath is clearly a huge fan of his subject; while he doesn't shy away from criticism of the man's life or work, he does downplay it. For instance, in discussing Lewis' Space Trilogy, McGrath states, "The quality of these is somewhat uneven, with the third being particularly difficult in places. Yet the main thing to appreciate is not so much their plots and points, but the medium through which they are expressed--stories, which captivate the imagination and open the mind to an alternative way of thinking." This is characteristic of McGrath's attitude throughout the book. While not necessarily a problem, it wears thin in some places where more support is needed to make a truly sound argument. Dense for general readers but an excellent scholarly read encompassing new ideas for Lewis devotees or those interested in religious argument.
| BN ID: | 2940172216299 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Oasis Audio |
| Publication date: | 03/01/2013 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
THE SOFT HILLS OF DOWN: AN IRISH CHILDHOOD
"I was born in the winter of 1898 at Belfast, the son of a solicitor and of a clergyman's daughter." On 29 November 1898, Clive Staples Lewis was plunged into a world that was simmering with political and social resentment and clamouring for change. The partition of Ireland into Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland was still two decades away. Yet the tensions that would lead to this artificial political division of the island were obvious to all. Lewis was born into the heart of the Protestant establishment of Ireland (the "Ascendancy") at a time when every one of its aspects—political, social, religious, and cultural—was under threat.
Ireland was colonised by English and Scottish settlers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, leading to deep political and social resentment on the part of the dispossessed native Irish towards the incomers. The Protestant colonists were linguistically and religiously distinct from the native Catholic Irish. Under Oliver Cromwell, "Protestant plantations" developed during the seventeenth century—English Protestant islands in an Irish Catholic sea. The native Irish ruling classes were quickly displaced by a new Protestant establishment. The 1800 Act of Union saw Ireland become part of the United Kingdom, ruled directly from London. Despite being a numerical minority, located primarily in the northern counties of Down and Antrim, including the industrial city of Belfast, Protestants dominated the cultural, economic, and political life of Ireland.
Yet all this was about to change. In the 1880s, Charles Stewart Parnell (1846–1891) and others began to agitate for "Home Rule" for Ireland. In the 1890s, Irish nationalism began to gain momentum, creating a sense of Irish cultural identity that gave new energy to the Home Rule movement. This was strongly shaped by Catholicism, and was vigorously opposed to all forms of English influence in Ireland, including games such as rugby and cricket. More significantly, it came to consider the English language as an agent of cultural oppression. In 1893 the Gaelic League (Conradh na Gaeilge) was founded to promote the study and use of the Irish language. Once more, this was seen as an assertion of Irish identity over and against what were increasingly regarded as alien English cultural norms.
As demands for Home Rule for Ireland became increasingly forceful and credible, many Protestants felt threatened, fearing the erosion of privilege and the possibility of civil strife. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Protestant community in Belfast in the early 1900s was strongly insular, avoiding social and professional contact with their Catholic neighbours wherever possible. (C. S. Lewis's older brother, Warren ["Warnie"], later recalled that he never spoke to a Catholic from his own social background until he entered the Royal Military College at Sandhurst in 1914.) Catholicism was "the Other"—something that was strange, incomprehensible, and above all threatening. Lewis absorbed such hostility towards—and isolation from—Catholicism with his mother's milk. When the young Lewis was being toilet trained, his Protestant nanny used to call his stools "wee popes." Many regarded, and still regard, Lewis as lying outside the pale of true Irish cultural identity on account of his Ulster Protestant roots.
THE LEWIS FAMILY
The 1901 Census of Ireland recorded the names of everyone who "slept or abode" at the Lewis household in East Belfast on the night of Sunday, 31 March 1901. The record included a mass of personal details—relationship to one another, religion, level of education, age, sex, rank or occupation, and place of birth. Although most biographies refer to the Lewis household as then residing at "47 Dundela Avenue," the Census records them as living at "House 21 in Dundella [sic] Avenue (Victoria, Down)." The entry for the Lewis household provides an accurate snapshot of the family at the opening of the twentieth century:
Albert James Lewis, Head of Family, Church of Ireland, Read & Write, 37, M, Solicitor, Married, City of Cork
Florence Augusta Lewis, Wife, Church of Ireland, Read & Write, 38, F, Married, County Cork
Warren Hamilton Lewis, Son, Church of Ireland, Read, 5, M, Scholar, City of Belfast
Clive Staples Lewis, Son, Church of Ireland, Cannot Read, 2, M, City of Belfast
Martha Barber, Servant, Presbyterian, Read & Write, 28, F, Nurse—Domestic Servant, Not Married, County Monaghan
Sarah Ann Conlon, Servant, Roman Catholic, Read & Write, 22, F, Cook—Domestic Servant, Not Married, County Down3
As the Census entry indicates, Lewis's father, Albert James Lewis (1863–1929), was born in the city and county of Cork, in the south of Ireland. Lewis's paternal grandfather, Richard Lewis, was a Welsh boilermaker who had immigrated to Cork with his Liverpudlian wife in the early 1850s. Soon after Albert's birth, the Lewis family moved to the northern industrial city of Belfast, so that Richard could go into partnership with John H. MacIlwaine to form the successful firm MacIlwaine, Lewis & Co., Engineers and Iron Ship Builders. Perhaps the most interesting ship to be built by this small company was the original Titanic—a small steel freight steamer built in 1888, weighing a mere 1,608 tons.
Yet the Belfast shipbuilding industry was undergoing change in the 1880s, with the larger yards of Harland and Wolff and Workman Clark achieving commercial dominance. It became increasingly difficult for the "wee yards" to survive economically. In 1894, Workman Clark took over MacIlwaine, Lewis & Co. The rather more famous version of the Titanic—also built in Belfast—was launched in 1911 from the shipyard of Harland and Wolff, weighing 26,000 tons. Yet while Harland and Wolff's liner famously sank on its maiden voyage in 1912, MacIlwaine and Lewis's much smaller ship continued to ply its trade in South American waters under other names until 1928.
Albert showed little interest in the shipbuilding business, and made it clear to his parents that he wanted to pursue a legal career. Richard Lewis, knowing of the excellent reputation of Lurgan College under its headmaster, William Thompson Kirkpatrick (1848–1921), decided to enrol Albert there as a boarding pupil. Albert formed a lasting impression of Kirkpatrick's teaching skills during his year there. After Albert graduated in 1880, he moved to Dublin, the capital city of Ireland, where he worked for five years for the firm of Maclean, Boyle, and Maclean. Having gained the necessary experience and professional accreditation as a solicitor, he moved back to Belfast in 1884 to establish his own practice with offices on Belfast's prestigious Royal Avenue.
The Supreme Court of Judicature (Ireland) Act of 1877 followed the English practice of making a clear distinction between the legal role of "solicitors" and "barristers," so that aspiring Irish lawyers were required to decide which professional position they wished to pursue. Albert Lewis chose to become a solicitor, acting directly on behalf of clients, including representing them in the lower courts. A barrister specialised in courtroom advocacy, and would be hired by a solicitor to represent a client in the higher courts.
Lewis's mother, Florence ("Flora") Augusta Lewis (1862–1908), was born in Queenstown (now Cobh), County Cork. Lewis's maternal grandfather, Thomas Hamilton (1826–1905), was a Church of Ireland clergyman—a classic representative of the Protestant Ascendancy that came under threat as Irish nationalism became an increasingly significant and cultural force in the early twentieth century. The Church of Ireland had been the established church throughout Ireland, despite being a minority faith in at least twenty-two of the twenty-six Irish counties. When Flora was eight, her father accepted the post of chaplain to Holy Trinity Church in Rome, where the family lived from 1870 to 1874.
In 1874, Thomas Hamilton returned to Ireland to take up the position of curate-in-charge of Dundela Church in the Ballyhackamore area of East Belfast. The same temporary building served as a church on Sundays and a school during weekdays. It soon became clear that a more permanent arrangement was required. Work soon began on a new, purpose-built church, designed by the famous English ecclesiastical architect William Butterfield. Hamilton was installed as rector of the newly built parish church of St. Mark's, Dundela, in May 1879.
Irish historians now regularly point to Flora Hamilton as illustrating the increasingly significant role of women in Irish academic and cultural life in the final quarter of the nineteenth century. She was enrolled as a day pupil at the Methodist College, Belfast—an all-boys school, founded in 1865, at which "Ladies' Classes" had been established in response to popular demand in 1869. She attended for one term in 1881, and went on to study at the Royal University of Ireland in Belfast (now Queen's University, Belfast), gaining First Class Honours in Logic and Second Class Honours in Mathematics in 1886. (As will become clear, Lewis failed to inherit anything of his mother's gift for mathematics.)
When Albert Lewis began to attend St. Mark's, Dundela, his eye was caught by the rector's daughter. Slowly but surely, Flora appears to have been drawn to Albert, partly on account of his obvious literary interests. Albert had joined the Belmont Literary Society in 1881, and was soon considered one of its best speakers. His reputation as a man of literary inclinations would remain with him for the rest of his life. In 1921, at the height of Albert Lewis's career as a solicitor, Ireland's Saturday Night newspaper featured him in a cartoon. Dressed in the garb of a court solicitor of the period, he is depicted as holding a mortarboard under one arm and a volume of English literature under the other. Years later, Albert Lewis's obituary in the Belfast Telegraph described him as a "well read and erudite man," noted for literary allusions in his presentations in court, and who "found his chief recreation away from the courts of law in reading."
After a suitably decorous and extended courtship, Albert and Flora were married on 29 August 1894 at St. Mark's Church, Dundela. Their first child, Warren Hamilton Lewis, was born on 16 June 1895 at their home, "Dundela Villas," in East Belfast. Clive was their second and final child. The Census return of 1901 indicates that the Lewis household then had two servants. Unusual for a Protestant family, the Lewises employed a Catholic housemaid, Sarah Ann Conlon. Lewis's long-standing aversion to religious sectarianism—evident in his notion of "mere Christianity"—may have received a stimulus from memories of his childhood.
From the outset, Lewis developed a close relationship with his elder brother, Warren, which was reflected in their nicknames for each other. C.S. Lewis was "Smallpigiebotham" (SPB) and Warnie "Archpigiebotham" (APB), affectionate names inspired by their childhood nurse's frequent (and apparently real) threats to smack their "piggybottoms" unless they behaved properly. The brothers referred to their father as the "Pudaitabird" or "P'dayta" (because of his Belfast pronunciation of potato). These childhood nicknames would become important once more as the brothers reconnected and reestablished their intimacy in the late 1920s.
Lewis himself was known as "Jack" to his family and friends. Warnie dates his brother's rejection of the name Clive to a summer holiday in 1903 or 1904, when Lewis suddenly declared that he now wished to be known as "Jacksie." This was gradually abbreviated to "Jacks," and finally to "Jack." The reason for this choice of name remains obscure. Although some sources suggest that the name "Jacksie" was taken from a family dog that died in an accident, there is no documentary evidence in support of this.
THE AMBIVALENT IRISHMAN: THE ENIGMA OF IRISH CULTURAL IDENTITY
Lewis was Irish—something that some Irish seem to have forgotten, if they knew it at all. While I myself was growing up in Northern Ireland during the 1960s, my recollection is that when Lewis was referred to at all, it was as an "English" writer. Yet Lewis never lost sight of his Irish roots. The sights, sounds, and fragrances—not, on the whole, the people—of his native Ireland evoked nostalgia for the later Lewis, just as they subtly but powerfully moulded his descriptive prose. In a letter of 1915, Lewis fondly recalls his memories of Belfast: "the distant murmuring of the 'yards,'" the broad sweep of Belfast Lough, the Cave Hill Mountain, and the little glens, meadows, and hills around the city.
Yet there is more to Lewis's Ireland than its "soft hills." Its culture was marked by a passion for storytelling, evident both in its mythology and its historical narratives, and in its love of language. Yet Lewis never made his Irish roots into a fetish. They were simply part of who he was, not his defining feature. As late as the 1950s, Lewis regularly spoke of Ireland as his "home," calling it "my country," even choosing to spend his belated honeymoon with Joy Davidman there in April 1958. Lewis had inhaled the soft, moist air of his homeland, and never forgot its natural beauty.
Few who know County Down can fail to recognise the veiled Irish originals which may have inspired some of Lewis's beautifully crafted literary landscapes. Lewis's depiction of heaven in The Great Divorce as an "emerald green" land echoes his native country, just as the dolmens at Legananny in County Down, Belfast's Cave Hill Mountain, and the Giant's Causeway all seem to have their Narnian equivalents—perhaps softer and brighter than their originals, but still bearing something of their imprint.
Lewis frequently referred to Ireland as a source of literary inspiration, noting how its landscapes were a powerful stimulus to the imagination. Lewis disliked Irish politics and was prone to imagine a pastoral Ireland composed solely of soft hills, mists, loughs, and woods. Ulster, he once confided to his diary, "is very beautiful and if only I could deport the Ulstermen and fill their land with a populace of my own choosing, I should ask for no better place to live in." (In certain ways, Narnia can be seen as an imaginary and idealised Ulster, populated with creatures of Lewis's imagination, rather than Ulstermen.)
The term Ulster needs further explanation. Just as the English county of Yorkshire was divided into three parts (the "Ridings," from the Old Norse word for "a third part," thrithjungr), the island of Ireland was originally divided into five regions (Gaelic cúigí, from cóiced, "a fifth part"). After the Norman conquest of 1066, these were reduced to four: Connaught, Leinster, Munster, and Ulster. The term province now came to be preferred to the Gaelic cúige. The Protestant minority in Ireland was concentrated in the northern province of Ulster, which consisted of nine counties. When Ireland was partitioned, six of these nine counties formed the new political entity of Northern Ireland. The term Ulster is today often used as synonymous with Northern Ireland, with the term Ulsterman tending to be used—though not consistently—to designate "a Protestant inhabitant of Northern Ireland." This is done despite the fact that the original cúige of Ulster also included the three counties of Cavan, Donegal, and Monaghan, now part of the Republic of Ireland.
Lewis returned to Ireland for his annual vacation almost every year of his life, except when prevented by war or illness. He invariably visited the counties of Antrim, Derry, Down (his favourite), and Donegal—all within the province of Ulster, in its classic sense. At one point, Lewis even considered permanently renting a cottage in Cloghy, County Down, as the base for his annual walking holidays, which often included strenuous hikes in the Mountains of Mourne. (In the end, he decided that his finances would not stretch to this luxury.) Although Lewis worked in England, his heart was firmly fixed in the northern counties of Ireland, especially County Down. As he once remarked to his Irish student David Bleakley, "Heaven is Oxford lifted and placed in the middle of County Down."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from C. S. LEWIS A LIFE by ALISTER McGRATH Copyright © 2013 by Alister McGrath. Excerpted by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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